Public invited to talk by distinguished author Yi-Fu Tuan on March 13

The UH Mānoa Colleges of Arts and Sciences presents Cultural Diversity and the Ideal of Progress: An Evening with Yi-Fu Tuan.

The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place at the Art Auditorium on Wednesday, March 13, at 6:30 p.m. Books will be available for purchase at the event from the UH Bookstore.

An innovator and winner of the Lauréate Prix International de Géographie Vautrin Lud, Tuan has been called “one of the most remarkable and creative forces in the intellectual life of our time,” by Simon Schama, of Columbia University, and “a scholar with immense learning and an original point of view…who has reinvented our notions of space and place,” by Michael Kammen of Cornell.

The author of over two dozen influential books, Tuan has redefined the field of human and cultural geography by exploring the aesthetic and moral dimensions of h­­­­­uman culture and the meanings of home, place, wilderness, human goodness, art, and environment.

Born and raised in China, Tuan was educated in Australia and the Philippines in his early teens, and went on to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees from Oxford and the University of California at Berkeley. With his cosmopolitan upbringing, he moved to the American Midwest to teach. He became a full professor at the University of Minnesota in 1968, and later spent 15 years as a cherished teacher at the University of Wisconsin at Madison before retiring as the J. K. Wright and Vilas Professor Emeritus of Geography.

Tuan remains fully engaged in writing and publishing. His most recent books include: Landscapes of Fear, Human Goodness, and Coming Home to China. His other books include: Dominance and Affection, Place, Art, and Self, Place and Space: The Perspective of Experience, and the ground-breaking Topophila: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values.

The lecture is made possible by the late Dr. Dai Ho Chun through his estate gift that established the Dai Ho Chun Endowment for Distinguished Lecturers at the Colleges of Arts and Sciences. Chun was himself a distinguished and visionary educator.

The lecture is also sponsored by the UH Mānoa College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature, with additional help from the Dai Ho Chun Endowment Selection Committee, UH Mānoa Geography Department, and Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing.